Night soil is a euphemism for human faeces collected at night from cesspools, privies, etc. and sometimes used as a fertilizer.[1] Night soil is produced as a result of a waste management system in areas without community infrastructure such as a sewage treatment facility, or individual septic disposal. In this system of waste management, the human faeces are collected in solid form.
Collection
Faeces are excreted into a container or bucket, and are sometimes collected in the container with urine and other waste. The excrement in the pail were often covered with earth/dirt/soil. This may have contributed to the "soil" part of the term night soil. Often the deposition or excretion occurs within the residence, such as in a shophouse faced with overpopulation. This system is used in isolated rural areas and is important in developing nations or in areas that lack the adequate infrastructure to have running water. The material is collected for temporary storage and is disposed of depending on local custom.
Disposal
Disposal has varied through time. In urban areas, usually slums, a night soil collector will arrive regularly, at varying time periods depending on the supply and demand for night soil collection. Usually this occurs during the night, giving the night soil its name.
In isolated rural areas such as in farms, the household will usually dispose of the night soil themselves, but this practice is generally not referred to as night soil, though the eventual fate of the night soil, and style of handling, is similar.
After arriving at a collection point, usually as a special treatment center within the city, or perhaps an open cesspit, methods of dealing with the waste vary. The waste may go on being shipped to another larger centre to be ultimately taken care of, or be disposed of at that particular juncture.
Sanitation issues
The use of unprocessed human feces as fertilizer is a risky practice as it may contain disease-causing pathogens. Nevertheless, in developing nations it is widespread. Common parasitic worm infections, such as ascariasis, in these countries are linked to night soil, because their eggs are in feces. There have also been cases of disease-carrying tomatoes, lettuce, and other vegetables being imported from developing nations into developed nations.[citation needed]
These risks are eliminated by proper composting. "Finished compost should never be 'sterile,' but it should be sanitary. That means the compost should be teeming with beneficial microorganisms that do not pose a threat to human health. Any human disease organisms that may have been in the original organic material should have been eliminated, weakened, or greatly diminished by the time the compost has become mature."[2]
Human waste may be attractive as fertilizer because of the high demand for fertilizer and the relative availability of the material to create night soil. In areas where native soil is of poor quality, the local population may weigh the risk of using night soil.
The safe reduction of human waste into compost is possible. Many municipalities create compost from the sewage system biosolids, but then recommend that it only be used on flower beds, not vegetable gardens. Some claims have been made that this is dangerous or inappropriate without the expensive removal of heavy metals.
The Amish community in Pennsylvania USA uses 19th century farming technology including fertilizing with waste. This occasionally causes problems with government health authorities.[citation needed]
Historical examples
Ancient Attica
The use of sewage as fertilizer was common in ancient Attica. The sewage system of ancient Athens collected the sewage of the city in a large reservoir and then channelled it to the Cephissus river valley for use as fertilizer.[3]
United Kingdom
A gong farmer was the term used in Tudor England for a person employed to remove human excrement from privies and cesspits. Gong farmers were only allowed to work at night and the waste they collected had to be taken outside the city or town boundaries. They later became known as "night soil men" or "nightmen".[4] In the Manchester area they were also known as the Midnight Mechanic.
India
People responsible for the disposal of night soil are considered untouchables in India. The practice of untouchability was banned by law when India gained independence, but the tradition widely persists as the law is difficult to enforce. This "manual scavenging" is now illegal in all Indian states.[5]
The Indian government's Union Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment stated in 2003 that 676,000 people were employed in the manual collection of human waste in India.[5] Social organizations have estimated that up to 1.3 million Indians collect such waste.[5] Further, workers in the collection of human waste are confined to marriage amongst themselves, thereby leading to a waste-collecting caste, which passes its profession on from generation to generation.
Employment of Manual Scavengers and Creation of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993 has made manual scavenging illegal.
Japan
See also: Toilets in Japan
The reuse of feces as fertilizer was common in Japan. Waste products of rich people were sold at higher prices because their diet was better; therefore, more nutrients remained in their waste. Various historic documents[6] dating from the 9th century detail the disposal procedures for toilet waste.
Selling human waste products as fertilizers became much less common after World War II, both for sanitary reasons and because of the proliferation of chemical fertilizers, and less than 1% is used for night soil fertilization[clarification needed].[7] The presence of the United States occupying force, by whom the use of human waste as fertilizer was seen as unhygienic and suspect, was also a contributing factor: "the Occupationaires condemned the practice, and tried to prevent their compatriots from eating vegetables and fruit from the local markets".[8]
Modern Japan still has areas with ongoing night soil collection and disposal. The Japanese name for the 'outhouse within the house' style toilet, where night soil is collected for disposal, is Kumitori Benjo (汲み取り便所). The proper disposal or recycling of sewage remains an important research area that is highly political.
China, Singapore, and Hong Kong
The term is known, or even infamous, among the generations that were born in parts of China or Chinatowns (depending on the development of the infrastructure) before 1960. Post-World War II Chinatown, Singapore, before the independence of Singapore, utilized night-soil collection as a primary means of waste disposal, especially as much of the infrastructure was damaged and took a long time to rebuild following the Battle of Singapore and subsequent Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Following the development of the economy and the standard of living after independence, the night soil system in Singapore is now merely a curious anecdote from the time of colonial rule when new systems developed.
The collection method is generally very manual and heavily relies on close human contact with the waste. During the Nationalist era when the Kuomintang ruled mainland China, as well as Chinatown in Singapore, the night soil collector usually arrived with spare and relatively empty honey buckets to exchange for the full honey buckets. The method of transporting the honey buckets from individual households to collection centers was very similar to delivering water supplies by an unskilled laborer, with the exception that the item being transported was not at all potable and it was being delivered from the household, rather than to the household. The collector would hang full honey buckets onto each end of a pole he carried on his shoulder and then proceeded to carry it through the streets until he reached the collection point.
Hong Kong has a similar euphemism, 倒夜香 dàoyèxiāng, which literally means "pour night fragrant".
Humans have been using their own waste matter as fertiliser for thousands of years, but with modern treatment processes biosolids have never been safer, according to one expert.
Professor Mike McLaughlin, a science fellow with the CSIRO and professor at the University of Adelaide, has studied soils and the use of biosolids for a number of years, and said the treatment process makes sewage safer even than other organic fertilisers.
“Potentially soils can carry disease – soils are full of bacteria, too. But if [biosolids] are treated properly, there shouldn’t be any additional risk. It’s probably safer than using cow manure, for example – cow manure isn’t treated,” he said. “People think fresh is good, but sometimes it’s not.”
Cropping and grazing farmer Danny Flanery has stepped where none of his neighbours dared go when he accepted thousands of truck-loads of Sydney sewage. Read his story here.
Professor McLaughlin said the Chinese were using human waste as fertiliser 2000 years ago, and pointed out that the colloquial name for waste treatment facilities, sewage farms, originates from late 19th or early 20th century England, when the waste was sent to actual farms for recycling and reuse.
The treatment process for the sewage usually involves three phases – sedimentation, biological treatment to break down organics, and stabilisation to make sure odours and volatiles don’t attract flies.
The biological treatment includes putting organisms into the waste to process the organic matter, which breaks down the natural nasties that live in sewage. But problems start to arise when contaminants that can’t be broken down – such as pesticides or metals – are introduced into sewage systems.
“It’s not actually poo coming out the other end. It’s dead bugs, basically, and things that can’t be degraded. In that sense, the human poo has been totally recycled into microbial bodies,” Professor McLaughlin said.
“Everything we put down the toilet, and everything the industry puts down the drain, will go through the waste water treatment plant, and if it can’t be degraded there, it’s either going to come out in the water or the solids.
“If the sewage treatment plant is working correctly, the organisms, as I say, are not the big issue. The big issue is more the trace contaminants, to make sure they don’t build up to a level that will, over the long term, affect agricultural production.”
Professor McLaughlin said biosolids are used in a number of regions, including in NSW, WA, and SA, and said it’s important not to waste the waste.
“To flush that stuff into the ocean would be a real shame because the world’s short of nutrients, and nutrients are becoming more expensive and food’s becoming more expensive, so it’s a very wasteful process to throw that away. So it’s really important that we try to recycle it,” he said.
In the ACT, biosolids are burned before they are recycled, which Professor McLaughlin said was a more certain way to kill any bad organisms, and reduced weight, but it was expensive and left a less nutrient-rich product.
“It does then save on transport costs because obviously you’ve removed all the water. But unfortunately you’ve removed a lot of the organic matter and nutrients, so from that point of view it’s not good because you’ve removed a lot of goodness from the material.”
Read more:
www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/human-waste-is-a-safe-fertiliser-expert-20130701-2p5wz.html#ixzz2z5WKZaRsReal organic agriculture: Using human waste as fertilizer
The other day, I got some funny looks from a journalist who was interviewing me for an upcoming series on World Food Day. She asked me to list some of the ways I thought world hunger could be reduced. In addition to pointing to the need for better distribution of food and other resources, I gave my standard spiel about growing more food in cities. About half of the world’s population now lives in cities, which makes growing food there not just a hobby for wealthy urbanites, but an essential step in improving the health of the urban poor. But what made the journalist look askance was my description of how exactly urban farmers in some parts of the world are fertilizing their crops: with human manure and urine.
It may be hard for some of us to stomach, but much of the food grown in developing-world cities is irrigated with waste water. According to the International Water Management Institute, the reason is very simple—water from sewage systems is a low-cost, nutrient-rich source of irrigation for the urban poor. As a result, worldwide, 3.5 to 4.5 million hectares of land are irrigated with poop and pee. And while this sort of “waste” water can contain a whole range of pathogens, farmers can learn to use it safely. In fact, a Finnish study released earlier this week found that using human urine for irrigation can slightly increase plant growth (they used cabbages) and does not affect the nutritional value of the crop. In other words, urine can replace costly store-bought fertilizers and produce nutritious, organically grown food.
Although farmers have used human waste as fertilizer for centuries, cities and governments have more recently looked down on the practice. But in countries like Ghana, officials do not have the money or infrastructure to provide alternatives. In Accra, for example, 200,000 people a day eat salad from land irrigated with urine and human manure. But while this helps provide these folks a diversified diet, it also gives a sense of how many people may be at risk from polluted water. Educating farmers on how to grow, wash, and prepare urban food safely and educating policymakers about the agricultural and economic benefits of human waste will help ensure that millions of urban dwellers don’t go hungry.
